The Thing With Feathers (Hope)
by CoffeeandStardust
Summary: Now that the team can go back into their own timelines Lucy decides it is time to give her journal to Flynn.


"Hope" is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all –

-Emily Dickinson

It had been six months since Emma had gotten away with the Czech engineer they had been trying to save and managed what everyone had been insisting was impossible since this whole time travel thing had begun. Well everyone except Flynn, who would just roll his eyes and scoff derisively at whoever made the mistake of saying so within his range of hearing. With Rittenhouse now able to travel back within their current agents' timelines the pressure had been on for Connor, Rufus, and Jiya to replicate the process. It had taken them three months, before they were sure the lifeboat was equipped to take the team back into their own timelines, "Without anyone's brains becoming cottage cheese." As Rufus put it when the whole endeavour had started. Subsequently the last three months had been spent playing catch up, trying to fix the changes that were made in times they didn't have access to, while also keeping up with the more historical jumps that felt like they had not slowed in the slightest. It looked like things were finally slowing down though. And after going three days without the mothership making a jump the inhabitants of the bunker were both more relaxed and more restless that they had had cause to be in quite some time.

Lucy was camped out on her cot with her back against the bunker wall flipping through their notes, occasionally comparing them to the battered book precariously positioned on the closest stack of papers. Lucy had taken to carrying it everywhere, stashing it on the Lifeboat during missions to keep it safe, and unaltered by temporal changes. She didn't bother to look up when Garcia flopped down next to her placing his head against her collarbone, just moved one arm to a more accommodating position which had the added benefit of her now being able to rest a hand against the back of his neck to comb through his hair.

For some time, the only sound was that of pages being shuffled and quite deep breathing.

"I think it might be time." Lucy broke the silence putting aside her papers, pulling the journal onto her lap.

Flynn made a humming noise against her shoulder otherwise unmoving.

"The journal," she clarified. At this he looked up his expression inscrutable, though she continued as if he hadn't moved at all. "We've had the means to do so for a little while now, not that we've had the time, or energy for much of anything other than trying to catch up with the damn Mothership." He made that humming noise again both agreeing with her and expressing his aggravation with the current situation.

"But we can go back in our own timeliness now." His change in mood was as sudden and mercurial as always, his answering smirk was so obnoxious she was tempted to throw one of the pillows she had tossed to the floor earlier at him.

"Yes, alright you were right Garcia, you're always right, are you happy now" she glared a little only half sarcastic. The man did have the incredibly annoying tendency to see things coming from a mile away, even without future knowledge.

"Oh exuberant." He laughed his face alight with humour.

"If you'll remember, I was the one who backed you when the others were going on about temporal impossibilities."

"Yes, I remember Lucy." He said warmly, bringing the hand he had been playing with to his lips brushing a kiss across the back of her hand.

"Anyway, besides the point." She tried to redirect the conversation bringing their entwined hands back to rest against her stomach, tracing her fingers against his.

"While everyone was crashed out yesterday I started thinking."

"Unusual for you" he teased. She chose to let this one go in the interest of continuing the conversation without further derailment.

"I started thinking," she continued as if he had not interrupted. "Well I've been mulling it over in the back of my head for a while now, but I started thinking that maybe it's time that I pass on my journal to you. Well past you." Wherever he thought this conversation was going this was obviously not it, judging by the expression on his face.

"It's just we can now," she continued on. "And it doesn't look like the mothership is making a move anytime soon which has to be making everyone as twitchy as it's making me, or it's going to start making them twitchy when they all get out of bed for more than five minutes." Flynn tugged her hand a little as if to try and get her back to her point. "So I thought, while we have the time, and now that we can, it would probably be smart to make sure I get this journal to you and close the loop before anything can go wrong." She looked down at their hands before adjusting her gaze, so she could watch him process what she had just suggested. "I know we always figured that I'd go back once we had sorted everything out, once we had won, or that I wouldn't need to because If everything goes right you won't need it" she trailed off. He pressed a kiss to her exposed collar bone, as If trying to sooth her. Neither one wanted to seriously contemplate the potential implications to their current timeline if they succeeded or If they didn't.

"But looking at where we are now, with everything that's happened, we're no closer to stopping them" she sighed pausing, the insurmountable nature of their mission weighing on her. "And the longer I think about it the more dangerous it seems to leave that loop unclosed. Without that happening," she paused again looking down at their entwined hands before focusing on his face, "I don't want to think about the affect it could have. What we could lose."

Flynn was still being unusually quiet, whatever he was thinking it wasn't evident on his face the way most of his thoughts were these days (at least to her they were usually evident).

"For quite some time now" he started speaking slowly, as if choosing every word carefully. "For some time, I've tried to avoid, to avoid influencing you when it comes to the journal." This much was true, he had so far refused to read the entries she made, or to help her write them, only providing his notes when she asked for them. "I think that maybe" he breathed deeply "Maybe I have been afraid of changing anything, anything that might change…" he trailed off breathing heavily searching for the words he wanted. "So if you think. If you want to do that, to give me the journal, to set us on this path. Then yes, I think we can do that. But Lucy," His hand moved to fiddle with the chain that she rarely took off. He looked more uncertain that she had seen him in a very long time.

"Amy." She said softly.

"Amy." He echoed.

"Garcia, we've had this conversation."

"Still If you never give that to me." He gestured to the journal.

"We don't know that. What we do know is that If you don't take the mothership then it's more than likely that Rittenhouse will gain control of the Mothership and the Lifeboat. And who's to say that they wont just go back and make that exact change intentionally, Amy for my mother. Besides," she stroked his hair before running her palm down his cheek across his jaw to tilt his face up so he was looking at her. "We're going to get her back. Everyone we lost we are eventually going to get them back. I have hope. And in the meantime Garcia, I wouldn't change where we are not for anything." Then she sealed her declaration with a kiss, stroking the side of his face before bringing her hand back down to his to rub against the silver band on his finger.

"So, I guess we should talk about that meeting. Any more details you wanted to give me?" she said once she had broken the kiss settling back against the wall.

"I don't want to influence anything you might say or do." They had gone back and forth on this point since she had decided to start keeping the journal for him. Arguing whether the journal he had possessed was something she had written apropos of nothing and it now belonged to an alternate timeline, or if future him had always told her what it contained, had always had a hand in writing it.

"Okay, I can live with that," she agreed. "But you're at least going to have to help me find that bar." He made a noise of agreement in the back of his throat.

"And do I at least look about how you remember me looking then?"

"Are you asking if I still think you have aged well?" He trailed off teasingly. This time she gave in to temptation, reaching down to grab the closest discarded pillow to hit him with. He allowed the first hit but discarded the pillow before she could try for a second.

"I meant do I look about the right age, is my hair the same?" she asked after a moment, resettling.

Flynn brought a hand to her face caressing the skin at the edge of her eye with his thumb before tangling his fingers in her hair carding them through the strands softly.

"It was a little shorter hmm, but I think that could just be that you had curled it, yes?" Lucy nodded in agreement bringing her hand up to brush her fingers against his wrist. "Yes, I think you look very much like you did then." His eyes were soft and far away. She brushed her fingers against his wrist again. He smiled up at her levering himself up from his position on his side to kiss her soft, and deep, and lingering.

"I suppose our next problem then is getting everyone else to agree." He said after pulling back, his hand still stroking through her hair.

"They all know what's at stake. None of us would be here if this," she gestured to the journal. "Hadn't helped you to steal the Mothership."

"Then I suppose all that's left is to talk to them." He said quietly. Lucy slid down the wall so that she could lay face to face with him, pressing her body against his and wrapping an arm around his middle. He took her movement as a sign she had said everything on the matter that she was going to. So he closed his eyes, wrapping his arm around her waist, feeling the weight of her body against his and prayed that this course of action would not lead to a loss he could not live with.

She had started writing the journal after a particularly close call about two and a half years prior. A second unexpected Rittenhouse sleeper with instructions to take her out had been installed in 1770 where the team were trying to make sure the Boston massacre continued on as history said it did. In the chaos of trying to stop the original sleeper Lucy and Rufus had been separated from Flynn and Wyatt and the second sleeper had taken advantage and shot her twice. The first bullet had gone straight through her shoulder, but the second hit and lodged in her stomach. Lucy remembered very little of how the boys had managed to get her back to the lifeboat and to the present. If fears of her own mortality, and the hit order on her that had apparently been posted throughout history wasn't enough to convince her to start the journal that would ensure they were all set on their current paths the look on Garcia's face when she came too, was more than enough to steel her resolve.

Over the course of the next few years the journal had become an odd mix of mission logs, more personal entries trying to mull out her thoughts and feelings, lists of things she didn't want to forget, and notes for Garcia. Instructions, warnings, and little things she wanted to share with him. Things she thought would make him laugh, things that might give him hope for the future.

It was raining when they landed in São Paulo, because of course it was. Lucy, Wyatt, and Rufus were the ones to make the trip. No one wanted to risk Flynn seeing his older self. They decided before they left that Wyatt and Rufus would stay with the Lifeboat to prevent any unintentional changes, unless Lucy called saying she had run into unexpected trouble. So, Lucy made her way into the city proper by herself.

She was hoping that she would be able to make her way to the bar she needed without too many issues. Before she left Garcia had taught her a couple of phrases in Portuguese, but she had no hope of holding a conversation more complicated than asking for directions or ordering a drink. The city was a sprawling mix of gorgeous old churches and modern skyscrapers. Being one of the world's most densely populated cities it was easy to see why Garcia would have chosen to make his way here to hide from both the Rittenhouse agents pursuing him, and the government forces that believed he had been the one responsible for the deaths of his family.

When Lucy made it to the bar she was surprised by it. It was dimly lit and quiet, but by no means rundown or sketchy. There were a group of what she assumed were regular patrons spaced along the bar chatting with the bar tender or each other, and a group of men in suits who were spread out across two of the tables with their papers. A group of what looked like college students were crowded around a pool table that occupied one side of the room. On the opposite side of the room in the booth closest to the back she saw him.

If she thought she knew what to expect she was wrong. She knew just how little time had passed since Lorena and Iris were killed. She knew what he was like when she had first met him. But even having heard him talk about this very night, about what this time in his life was like, Lucy was completely unprepared to see him this wrecked and beaten. She took a moment to order a drink and steel herself before she crossed the room and slid into the other side of the booth Garcia was currently occupying.

"I'm not interested." He rasped without looking up from what was decidedly not his first glass.

"I know Garcia." She said softly, forcing down the urge to take his hand. His head shot up at her use of his name suddenly looking more alert than he had any right to given what she suspected his level of inebriation was.

"Who are you. Who do you work for." His voice was sharp and his eyes hard. Lucy couldn't remember the last time he had looked at her with such animosity. It was harder than she thought it would be to see him looking at her without any recognition, any warmth. For the first time Lucy appreciated just how hard it must have been for him at the Hindenburg knowing so much about her, expecting the woman she is now, the woman who wrote the journal. Only to see her naive and angry. His glare was intensifying the longer she sat silent, she had to press on.

"My name is Lucy, Lucy Preston. I don't work for any government, and I'm not Rittenhouse." She said calmly as she could. He didn't look terribly reassured at this. At the word Rittenhouse he looked even more furious and desolate than before.

"What do you know about Rittenhouse." He bit out.

"Quite a bit." Lucy answered taking a drink trying to fortify herself. "Definitely more than I ever wanted to."

"Is that so, and what is it that you think you know about me that you would come and tell me this." He sneered.

The ironies of time travel she thought. "I know everything about you Garcia." He crossed his arms over his chest glaring at her. This was the part she had been dreading. "I know that your wife and child were murdered in the middle of the night by men with guns that had silencers, while your wife was checking on your daughter. I know you heard and tried to stop it. But there were too many of them. I know you were lucky to make it out of the house alive. I know you wish you hadn't." he looked so desolate, but she couldn't stop. "I know the official word is that you killed them. I know you could never have done what they say you did. I also know that Rittenhouse are the ones responsible for their deaths." If Lucy thought he couldn't look worse than he did when she first walked in she was wrong. He looked like she had sucker punched him. She could no longer hold back the urge to touch him, to comfort him, reassure him. She reached across the booth and took his hand that had fallen to the tabletop at some point.

"I want to help you Garcia." She said gently.

"Help, what is it that you think is going to help all this, what help could you possibly offer." He laughed. It was a hollow and tortured sound that made Lucy shudder. She hoped like hell that he would never have cause to make that sound again.

"Like I said, I know quite a bit about Rittenhouse. I'm going to help you take them down. We're going to take them down together."

"How?" he asked defeatedly eyes cast downwards. Revenge seemed impossible given his status and the reach of their power. Lucy griped his hand tightly until he met her eyes.

"I'm going to tell you something, and you're going to think I'm insane, but I need you to promise me that you'll listen all the way through. Okay?" He nodded his assent, and then she started talking. "In two years' time, Connor Mason is going to develop a time machine."

Lucy talked for what felt like hours. She talked about their history, how they became partners, what they learned about Rittenhouse, about the plan they had devised to take them down. With every subsequent word Flynn starts to believe a little more. This woman in front of him is passionate and eloquent, and both her words and her face tell him that what she is saying is true. He is starting to feel like taking down the bastards who murdered his girls is a real possibility. And then Lucy says something that feels like a hot poker has been driven through the centre of his chest. "If this all works out the way it's supposed to you can get them back."

His mind is spinning in twenty different directions, this whole evening has been a tempest of emotion he can't decide if he wants to scream or cry or hit things until he bleeds. And then everything focuses until all that is left is two thoughts. Take down Rittenhouse. Get his girls back.

"What do you need me to do?"

Lucy looks relieved and sad and he doesn't know what to make of it until she says, "I need you to be sure that this is the path you want to go down." He starts to respond but she shoots him a look that silences his attempted assurances. "If you decide that this is what you want you're going to have to do terrible things, things you didn't think you were capable of. Things that are going to unmake you so that you won't be able to reconcile who you were with what you've done." She brings her hand to his face to rest against the plane of his cheekbones and he is shocked by the warmth behind the gesture, the tenderness of her expression. She continues either ignoring his shock or not noticing. "I know you're going to say that you don't care, but I need you to really think about it, okay?" She looks at him imploringly.

What is there to think about. He has already done unspeakable things over the course of his career, he's already been unmade, broken by his grief. And besides anything that happens to him while getting vengeance, while getting his family back that would be a price he deserved to pay.

"It's my fault they're dead." His voice breaks half way through. "If I hadn't gone digging. If I hadn't taken the job, they would still be alive."

Lucy brings her other hand to his face as well cradling it between her palms forcing his gaze up to meet hers stroking his cheeks with her thumbs.

"This was not your fault." Her voice is gentle and firm. He closes his eyes. "Hey Garcia, listen to me." She pauses until he meets her eyes again. "You did not do this, Rittenhouse did." The lump in his throat feels like it is going to choke him.

"What do you need me to do?" He asks again. She lets go of his face, a resigned look on her own and takes one of his hands between hers. He can feel a ring on her left hand when she uses it to stroke against his wrist for a moment before she reaches into the satchel on the seat next to her and pulls out a well-worn leather bound book. She places it on the table by their entwined hands.

"I'm so." She stops and takes a deep shuddering breath. "I'm so sorry that this is falling to you, if there were any other way." She trailed off looking pained, imploring him to believe her. He wanted to offer some comfort, but he was unsure how to go about it. Unsure why she was upset, and unsure as to whether he had anything left in himself that could be of comfort to someone else. He brushed the fingers of the hand she was holding against hers back and forth. She stared at their hands on the table and seemed to find enough composure to continue.

"This will tell you everything you need to know." She said tapping the cover of the book with one finger. He notices the initials on it L.P. Lucy Preston he assumes. She looks like she is still struggling with handing it over. "Just promise me you'll read all the way through before you start anything." He nods his assent eyes cast towards the book, glued there as if he could get all the answers he needed just by staring at the cover. He starts turning things over in his head over and over faster and faster running through the events from the time he stole the files until right this moment when this book was placed in front of him.

"Are you okay?" she asks starling him out of his thoughts. He must have been silent, staring for a while. She looked worried and he finds himself unable to provide honest reassurance, but he thinks she already knows that.

"I don't know." He starts thinking about where he had been when this evening started and where he is now. Now he has a direction to go in, a goal to pursue. "But I think I could be."

She beams at him and it is breathtaking. A startling change from a moment ago when she seemed so distraught. For the first time since she sat down he really looks at her. If he had to guess he'd say she was just a year or two younger than he is. She's beautiful, classically so. Her entire face lights up when she smiles, and it makes her no less than enchanting.

"I think you will be." She says staring at his face still smiling. She squeezes his hand one more time. Then she grabs her satchel and moves until she is standing beside where he is sat.

"Are you leaving then." He asks turning to face her not sure why he is so put out with the idea.

Some of what he is thinking must be evident on his face because she grins cheekily winking at him before she says, "Don't worry we'll see each other soon."

"When?" He asks feeling a little dumbstruck.

"1937." She says laughing. "For you anyway." He stares blankly for a moment. "Time travel remember." She teases. He rolls his eyes a little surprising himself with the movement.

She's still smiling when she places one hand on his shoulder and brings the other to the back of his neck. She moves in slowly, giving him plenty of time to stop her if he wanted to. Later he's not sure why he doesn't. Very carefully she presses her lips to his, gentle and closed mouth for the briefest moment. Then she draws back. He cannot interpret all of the emotions that pass over her face.

"Goodbye for now Garcia" she says stroking her hand over his shoulder as she turns to leave. She hasn't gone two steps before he comes to his senses enough to speak.

"Lucy?" He starts.

"Yes?" She turns back to him, expression curious.

"Why are you doing all this, why did you come and find me today?"

She smiles at him again this time soft and warm. "Because I have hope, that somehow, someway, we'll save the people we love."


End file.
